Frontenacs to honour The Tragically Hip

The Kingston Frontenacs will be honouring The Tragically Hip by wearing special jerseys for their Saturday, Jan. 28, Ontario Hockey League game against the Mississauga Steelheads.

The jerseys will then be auctioned off online with the proceeds going to the Gord Downie Fund for Brain Cancer Research through Sunnybrook Hospital.

The Hip’s lead singer was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer late in 2015. After going public with the illness last May, Downie and bandmates Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair, Rob Baker and Johnny Fay embarked on a sold-out cross-Canada tour last summer, which ended with a concert at Kingston’s Rogers K-Rock Centre on Aug. 20.

The jersey was designed by the Frontenacs and Catstich, an Ontario-based jersey manufacturer that specializes in theme jerseys for hockey teams, said a statement from the Frontenacs.

The jersey’s design was based on Downie’s favourite National Hockey League team, the Boston Bruins.

“We started with the base of the 1964 Boston Bruins home jersey, to reflect the year Gord Downie was born and his favourite team,” said Justin Chenier, the Frontenacs director of business operations, in a statement. “We added The Tragically Hip’s logo-wordmark from their 2011 concert at Bobcaygeon as the main logo on the front of the jersey, and their signature-wordmark on the back.”

In the background of the jersey is the name of every album and song recorded and released by the band, from their self-titled 1987 debut to 2016’s Man Machine Poem.

Chenier said it was a natural fit to honour the band’s roots to the community at a hockey game.

“In Kingston, hockey and The Tragically Hip go hand in hand. Their music has been a fixture at hockey games — including the hometown Kingston Frontenacs — for decades.”

Hockey Hall of Fame member and Kingston Frontenacs general manager Doug Gilmour also helped raise money for Downie’s fund through his initiative, Courage: Let’s Do It For Gordie, which ran until the end of 2016.

Chenier said in an email that the band members have been invited to the game later this month and the team is hoping some or all of them can be honoured in person.

“As a team, we’ve talked about honouring The Tragically Hip, and when the reality of Gord’s diagnosis set in, we knew we could to do something special to honour the band and help raise funds to help with the research for brain cancer.”

Full details on the jersey auction site will be released the week prior to the game.

Tickets for the game are on sale at the Rogers K-Rock Centre on on Ticketmaster.ca. Game time is 7 p.m.